Mike Pence lost all plausible deniability about his alleged ignorance of all things Russian today, if the Washington Post is correct that Pence benefactor and mentor Erik Prince is the "representative of Trump" named in an anonymous letter received by the Post in December; and moreover that Prince was a member of the Trump transition team all along.

The letter said among other things that Jared Kushner had talked to Sergei Kislyak about setting up a secret and secure communications channel between the Trump administration and the Kremlin. The letter also made reference to a "Trump representative" meeting with a Russian contact to set up the communications channel and the Trump representative is Erik Prince. If The Washington Post is correct, and it certainly appears that way, there is absolutely no way that Pence can maintain he didn't know everything about Flynn and Trump-Russia, and that he learned it first hand from Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, and Erik Prince. This could be more than a leak, this could be a deluge, where Mike Pence and his credibility are concerned. The Washington Post said this:

In addition to their discussion about setting up the communications channel, Kushner,Flynn and Kislyak also talked about arranging a meeting between a representative of Trump and a "Russian contact" in a third country whose name was not identified, according to the anonymous letter.

The Post reports that the United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and an un-named Russian close to Vladimir Putin, with the alleged goal of establishing a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and and the Trump transition team, headed by Mike Pence, according to U.S, European and Arab officials.

Though Prince had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition team, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Putin confidant, according to the officials, who did not identify the Russian.

Prince was an avid supporter of Trump. After the Republican convention, he contributed $250,000 to Trump's campaign, the national party and a pro-Trump super PAC led by GOP mega-donor Rebekah Mercer, records show. He has ties to people in Trump's circle, including Stephen K. Bannon, now serving as the president's chief strategist and senior counselor. Prince's sister Betsy DeVos serves as education secretary in the Trump administration. And Prince was seen in the Trump transition offices in New York in December.

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Prince and his family were major GOP donors in 2016. The Center for Responsive Politics reported that the family gave more than $10 million to GOP candidates and super PACs, including about $2.7 million from his sister, DeVos, and her husband.

Erik Prince has had lucrative contracts with the UAE government, which at one point paid his firm a reported $529 million to help bring in foreign fighters to help assemble an internal paramilitary force capable of carrying out secret operations and protecting Emirati installations from terrorist attacks.

The Washington Post goes on to point out that Erik Prince would have been perceived as way too controversial to serve in an official capacity on the transition team. But unquestionably Prince was a terrific go between because of his experience as an ex CIA agent and former Navy Seal, experience which arguably qualifies him for yet more clandestine endeavors, coupled with his relationship with the royal leaders of the Emirates, where he moved to in 2010 amid mounting legal problems with his American business.